Main Street closure set to begin early Monday

Road expected to reopen in May

Apr. 6, 2014

People drive by construction signs Friday morning near the intersection of Memorial Drive and West Main Street in Lancaster. Main Street is set to close early Monday morning from Memorial Drive to High Street for construction. / Jess Grimm/Eagle-Gazette

Written by

The Eagle-Gazette Staff

Online

For more about the Main Street project and other roadwork efforts in Fairfield County, visit Lancaster

EagleGazette.

com/Road

Work.

More

ADVERTISEMENT

LANCASTER — With Main Street closure set to begin at 5:30 a.m., Monday, Destination Downtown Lancaster representatives say downtown businesses will remain open and ready for business during the planned six-week closure.

“Though Main Street will be closed from Memorial Drive to High Street, business downtown will continue as usual and visitors should be able to access their destinations with minimal interference,” said Kate Ervin, executive director of Destination Downtown Lancaster. “The public is urged to continue their support of local businesses throughout the construction period.”

That section of Main Street will be closed for six weeks. The Ohio Department of Transportation is coordinating the work. Shelly Co. is the primary contractor.

The project is part of the second phase of the Main Street paving program that began last summer.

The plan is to replace the bricks at the intersections and repave with an asphalt-concrete product designed specifically for high-traffic areas.

Toby Shamblin, superintendent of the Lancaster Department of Transportation, said the actual time for the closure was determined Thursday during a meeting with ODOT, the Lancaster Department of Transportation and Shelly company representatives.

Eastbound traffic will be rerouted onto Chestnut Street, with westbound traffic rerouted to Wheeling Street. Both Wheeling and Chestnut streets will remain two-way for local traffic.

Shamblin said traffic into the city’s parking lot and to the Fairfield County Job and Family Services building, which also houses the Fairfield County Prosecutor’s Offices and the Fairfield County Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency offices, will be through the Wheeling Street entrance.

Downtown businesses will be affected during the construction period.

Fairfield Federal Savings and Loan will close its drive-thru lanes at the main office, 111 E. Main St., during the construction. But it will open its lobby an hour earlier, at 8 a.m., during the construction.

Alleys parallel to Main Street will remain open to provide access to businesses and parking lots and the city has had crews out this week filling potholes in the alleys.

Shamblin said special temporary parking lots are being created on the first blocks of North Columbus and Broad streets. All sidewalks will remain open during the construction period, allowing for pedestrian traffic.

“We are going to wait until after the road closes before creating the parking spaces, just to be cautious,” Shamblin said. “We should have those new temporary spaces being painted on the street on Monday.”

Lancaster Mayor Dave Smith said that, with the recent turnover of the county’s parking lot to the city of Lancaster, he is working on a plan with businesses that have rented spots on the lot to be consolidated and open up some public spots in that lot during the daytime hours.

“Right now, we think we can have between 18 to 20 public parking spaces in the lot off Chestnut Street,” Smith said. “We are still working on the final configuration and want to group them together to make it easy for signage and the public to find them. They should be available early next week.”

During the closure, Destination Downtown Lancaster’s events planned for the period are still moving ahead, Ervin said.

Lancaster’s Chocolate Walk is still slated for Friday. It includes more than 30 stops in the downtown area, Ervin said. The Handmade and Farmers Markets seasons will kick off May 3 in downtown Lancaster, and the first monthly Saturday cinema outdoor movie will be shown that night.

However, the annual downtown cleanup day has been postponed until May 17, after the street reopens.

Shamblin said he knows this is going to be inconvenient for many people and said he keeps asking for patience.

“It’s a short-term inconvenience for a long-term benefit for our community,” Shamblin said.